


militat omnis amans

by rAdiantOrdam



Category: Cowboy Bebop (Anime)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Pre-Canon, Reunion, Slow Burn, Survival, Survivor Guilt, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:12:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19265650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rAdiantOrdam/pseuds/rAdiantOrdam
Summary: No, she wasn'tthatperson. She was supposed to be an angel. She was supposed to be his savior.





	militat omnis amans

The whole world is blue that day; hide the gold of the Titan sun.

She doesn't even feel a cry to refrain from. No blue tears. It's barely all she can manage, "oh", marked the sound of familiar heartbreak.  
_Oh no no._

He's captured her in his hand already, gun aimed bullseye at her heart. The slight rustling of his uniform and the drop of his foot in a one-two-one step. Without a voice but he sounds cold, cold like the sky and spear mint, thrumming in her throat and chest; strikes her heart rigid like her speechless tongue. 

She's never been so cornered.

"Electra?" he says her name like a drop of honey, light on water, she imagines her name in golden meter. 

And it hits her like a brick and snaps her shield in half because that's how he had always said her name: in gentle tongue, vulnerable, risqué. And this is Titan, where he is, doing his job as a renegade, no longer a soldier but no different of a routine for a brutish nature.

She realizes this just as the comfort in his voice is suddenly gone, sucked back into a vacuum she's managed to fish him out of once.

And this is when she realizes:

_I've come all this way to..._

"Why don't you shoot?" He asks her these questions. He has coiled short hair black like holes in the sky; his brows are narrow, tear wrinkles on his aging face and eyes she couldn't identify with anymore.  
This is the same man she...

_I've come all this way to..._

"Why don't you shoot?" He asks her these questions again. Every clustered detail demands the same answer. She wonders if he _wants_ to hurt her like this. 

When she doesn't respond, he tells her every freedom and award she'd get if she did it, and every bit of tear and torture if she didn't. She remembers every word of it, even when she's already known everything. When he finishes, it all collapses into a murmur of his deep voice that drenches her in dread, makes her want to curl around herself and never see the sun, more than the colder Titan nights do. 

She thinks this is what it all ends to.  
And this must be the punishment. She couldn't be the huntress she promised to be. 

She's a soldier, but she wasn't made of arms and order. Electra couldn't kill Vincent; she can't hunt him down in these rose-bronze dunes.

_I've come all this way to..._

And she suddenly feels so foolish. She really thought it would work, walked a million miles just to test it and then break her own heart. 

Running had sounded so pleasurable and it disgusts her.

No, she wasn't _that_ person. She was supposed to be an angel. She was supposed to be his savior. 

She already knows how bad playing refuge would be, another mimicking of the past miserable year on Titan. She can't believe the war was only half of it.

_I've come all this way to..._

In armor, he's trying to be resilient, stolid, every adjective that tells her of his attempted aloofness, but she can see his heart breaking in his eyes. His jaw stiffens to say something, like he were speaking another language, and reaches towards her like she's a dictionary. She almost warily flinches at the hand so pale she was convinced it would pass right through her. 

No; she wasn't dreaming. 

She feels a mass on her arm, it weighs down on against the press of her sleeve and grows warm. It's real. 

She wouldn't cry in blood, in war. But this fills the back of her eyes, some devilish tears threaten to leak like a broken pipe. 

But girls like her won't cry.

But girls like her _will not_ cry. 

It ends in the way she secretly desired. His arms are around her that ease the pain out of her chest. At the same time, she starts to feel the welcome and the goodbye, two things she’s not ready for.

For a moment, she inwardly curses at her memory, having forgotten how good this felt. She almost wants to tell him to stop - to stop _rescuing_ her. Because no, she wasn’t _that_ person. She was supposed to be an angel. She was supposed to be _his_ savior. 

_I've come all this way to..._

By his neck, she looks at the hard folds on his face and rugged pores and scars he's gotten from his odyssey and back.

They both meet somewhere, in green eyes full of sorrow.

Electra can’t feel her knees and she’s tempted to lean in, fall against and into his hard, warm haven of a chest. How much she's enjoying it disgusts her; she’s supposed to be doing this, she wasn't _that_ person. She was supposed to be an angel. She was supposed to be his savior.

There's no hope in the pleasure of apology anymore.

She wants to apologize, with a wobbling lip against his shoulder and squeezes him tightly, tighter, and tighter.

_If only wishes could be...in armor..._

It never comes out. 

Instead, she pulls a weak murmur from her throat, with straight dejection through the course of her brittle voice like she knew it wasn't going to work. 

_But girls like her are prepared..._

_But girls like her have a plan..._

"Electra..." He coos her name again, lulled it into her ear like the echo of the world. It vibrates against the press of his chest, proceeded with his heartbeat and she can almost hear it syncing with her three-syllabled name:

_El-ec-tra_

_El-ec-tra_

_El-ec-tra_

She's brought down to her knees; Vincent holds her, her breath coming in short, trembling gasps while he gently tries and lulls to her again. But she's pressed even closer against his chest and can hear it louder - those horrible, desperate cries she can only hear and never answer:

_El-ec-tra_

_El-ec-tra_

_El-ec-tra_

And this is when her heart breaks. She clutches the fabric of his sleeve, lets her nails run deep into her palms full of red and hears the rhythm of her own heart through her swollen hands: 

_El-ec-tra_

_El-ec-tra_

_El-ec-tra_

_She's_ crying now, from the pulse of it hitting her over and over and over.

No, she wasn't that person. She wasn't _that_ angel. She wasn't _that_ savior. _That_ person wouldn't sob like a little girl about a fantasy idea: 

"Why don't we just run away?"

But she doesn't want to believe she's failed him.


End file.
